


Empty Teacups

by Mechanic_Dove



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alcohol, College AU, Finals Week, Fluff, Let Them Sleep, M/M, POV Second Person, Sitting on the kitchen floor at 3 AM, Underage Drinking, asshole roommates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-23
Updated: 2017-02-23
Packaged: 2018-09-26 10:19:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9888281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mechanic_Dove/pseuds/Mechanic_Dove
Summary: You polish off your tea and consider taking a cup of what he’s making when you remember Keith’s taste in coffee is fucking rat poison.





	

It’s three AM and you’re sitting on the kitchen floor, with your fourth cup of tea in the last hour when he arrives. You look up, and he looks down and neither of you say anything. He steps on your notes trying to get to the sink and snorts when you make a noise of protest, not really wanting his holey socks on your piles and piles of French conjugations and instances in which to use the imperfect and when to not. There are doodles in all the margins, (you’ve never been good at drawing, but at least you can spin prose like you’re god damn Shakespeare-) and you actually try to cover up the bad ones because the idea of your self-declared archrival seeing you try to draw an eye is more embarrassing than you could fathom. He fills the coffee pot with water and pours it into the machine. You polish off your tea and consider taking a cup of what he’s making when you remember Keith’s taste in coffee is fucking rat poison. He likes bogging it down with enough sugar and cream that it’s more of a paste than a liquid and, in the last few days at least, has simply fixed up the entire batch to his liking and drank it all out of the pot like he thinks he’s Clint Barton or something.

You leave the empty teacup where it is, and you go back to what you were doing, which was pretending, with all your might to study in the hopes that you can fake it until you make it. You get only marginally further than you were in translating a ‘letter from a friend’ before Keith, in all his sweatpant, hoodie glory plops down next to you like that was a fucking option all along. As predicted he takes a swig of his hell juice and you deal.

“Yes?” It comes out more defeated than angry and you suppose you’ll have to make a point to act less like you want to die and more like you want to fight, you add as an afterthought, “…Bitch.”

He lets out a snort and pulls his knees up to his chest, cradling the hot pot of coffee in his lap like it’s the only thing keeping him warm. It might be, he’s from Texas after all and you will cling to any stereotype you can find like it’s a lifeline if it’ll get a rise out of him. He pushes your notes away with his foot, ruining your system that took you over thirty seconds to construct.

“In _my house_ ” you hiss, scrambling to pull it all back together while he laughs.

“It’s my house too, and quiet down or you’ll wake Hunk up” he takes a gulp of his coffee like it’s not still too hot to sip and while you notice the bags under his eyes you have little sympathy.

“What time is your exam tomorrow?”

He makes a point to take three more gulps as if to emphasize his point before murmuring, “My exam is in five hours”

“Physics?”

“Yeah.”

You sit in silence for a minute, and you find yourself staring at your empty tea cup, trying to decide if you want a green tea, or Earl Grey, or just a cup of whisky.

The unholy trinity of all three crosses your mind and you rub your eyes, instead focusing on remembering the words for tea in English, Spanish, and French. Then you smack your skull back against your Tupperware drawer and you wonder how you deteriorated to this point only a day into finals week. Keith stands back up and goes to the liquor cabinet, the one full of various beers you’ve stolen from parties and a half handle of cheap whiskey that Coran bought for you after a solid week and a half of begging him for it after Shiro and Allura turned you down. He pours a healthy dose into what could already probably qualify as nuclear waste, and you would be absolutely disgusted if you weren’t holding your tea cup out for just a little bit of a reward after nearing twelve hours of studying.

He looks disappointed in you and you stick your tongue out at him

He pours you the drink anyway, and once the pair of you are back in your spots, shoulders and hips touching as he looks over your French notes you become very aware he hasn’t showered in more than two days and have a hard time judging him for it. You still feel obliged to needle him however, “you fucking stink, dude.”

“Suck a dick” He murmurs back, taking a big gulp of his drink and looking disgusted for a moment before his shoulders relax, “You do too, by the way. When did you last change your shirt or do your laundry?”

“Fair, but my point still stands.” You spend a couple moments trying to find what the fucking translation of a simple word you’ve seen a hundred times is, flipping through the appendix of your textbook and thrice forgetting how the alphabet works in your stupor before stumbling upon it by pure luck.

He’s watching over your shoulder and you slap your book shut hoping to make him jump. The bastard doesn’t even flinch, “Why are you here and not gouging your own eyes out like I want to do? Are you ready for your test? What’s the equation for centripetal force, huh?”

“Centripetal force is equal to mass times velocity squared over radius.”

“You hesitated”

“Eat a dick Lance, It’s not like you could spout any equation on command”

“Try me.”

“Fine, what’s the equation for work?”

“Force times displacement times cosine theta”

He gives you a look like he really hates you and you shoot him a sunny smile that probably looks more like a snarl with your chapped lips and lack of control of your face, “I took AP Physics. _You_ eat a dick”

He snorts softly presses further into your shoulder, which is not only odd for you two but odd for him in general. He rarely gets very touchy feely, even with Hunk or Shiro. You feel a little touched, and for once you don’t do anything to ruin the moment, “I just need a break, if I keep going on like this, I’m going to lose my mind”

“Fair” You murmur softly, his hair is greasy and revolting, most of it in a little pony tail at the nap of his neck and his bangs tickling your jaw, You finish your cup of whisky, and in an effort not to dislodge him, steal his pot of steaming death for a swig of caffeine and alcohol.

It is not worth it

You manage not to do much more than shake, not coughing out loud lest you wake Hunk with your bad decisions. It’s only thirty minutes later that the cloying taste of sugar-whisky-dirt finally dissipates. By then Keith is dead asleep on your shoulder, and you are so knee deep in French vocabulary that you’re actually surprised when you look up at the oven clock and find that it’s five thirty. Keith shifts when you move too much and you hold your breath as he lets out a sleepy, “Hm?”

“Go back to sleep, I’ll wake you up at six so you don’t miss the bus”

He lets out another little “Hm.” And presses a little closer, too tired to give that much of a shit and you’re well aware that he’ll have a wicked crick in his neck for the next day or two from sleeping like this.

When you can’t cram anything else into your brain you end up on Reddit, looking for something to lift your spirits and rejuvenate you with the will to live. The mood is quiet and still, Keith drooling on your already dirty shirt, and the sunset painting the walls of your kitchen orange and red. Your eyes are tired, and you can feel the bags under them, but you also feel like you want to keep them open. If just for a little while for some reason or another. You have an exam in four hours and with the near fifteen hours of studying you’ve done you hope you’ll be fine.

When six rolls around, you find yourself disappointed, you want to hit snooze and stay in this moment forever. But the world moves on

Keith has to go to his final and you have to pee, and if Hunk finds you here you’ll never hear the end of it.

But it was nice, you think shaking Keith lightly to wake him, while it lasted.

 

**Author's Note:**

> A good amount of things said in this fic are direct quotes from me and my roommate, I hope you enjoyed!


End file.
